Slashdot Mirror

here and here and here.

All of these talk about NPP (net production). On the NASA image, it the relative picture is misleading since there is not that much NPP in the tundra or deserts!

Anyway, the 50% is not made up. 50% of all land plant growth equievelence seems close to being accurate. The oceans are quite baren now (and the volume of the Pacific is equal to the volume of the Moon). Now that China is getting fat, we can only see the NPP skyrocket (meat calorie production requires about 9x plant calorie input).

As someone said, "People are not pigs. People will eat anything".

That said, CO2 is just one of the greenhouse gasses that we should watch. Getting rid of one greenhouse gas won't solve anything if you just replace it with greater outputs of another, and it is unlikely that we will ever be able to completely eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions, even if it's just from fireplaces in people's homes. Even "clean-burning natural gas" releases H2O, which is also considered a greenhouse gas.

The point I was trying to make was that we need to use energy-reducing energy sources at a level that balances the total energy being added by burning fossil fules, nuclear energy, etc., -including- the energy being added by the greenhouse gasses that they release into the air.

Finally, I'll just say that I don't buy this runaway greenhouse thing. Greenhouse gasses don't just stay in the air. They react, then settle, they get absorbed by plants, etc. and the planet adjusts its absorption depending on the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. This article describes one such mechanism:

NASA's page on the subject

http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/MSU/msusci.html

I know you're being sarcastic, but just to demonstrate the point: I saw a documentary on the eruption of Krakatoa, which said that the amount (12 cubic miles) of crap spilt out into the atmosphere caused a net increase in global warming of half a Celsius degree. That's back in what, 1870-odd?

How much have we gained in C20? the last 50 years? How much do we have to before everything melts and goes pfui?

C02 (C20 would be a solid at atmospheric temperature and pressures concerned here) has increased 79% since the start of the industrial revolution ca 1840 (or 1760 by some estimates). That sounds like a lot, but we're talking about parts per million. Prior to about the industrail revolution, atmospheric C02 as measured on the ground was about 280 ppm. Lately, measurements have peaked at 353 ppm. (280 ppm/353 ppm)x100%=79.3%. But we're still talkinga bout a concentration of 353 parts per million, which works out to .0353% by volume of C02. In other words, C02 is a minor trace gas compared to Oxygen(20%) and Nitrogen (79%).

On the issue of volcanoes, it is a fact that they emit more pollutants in a single large eruption than all of human activity over a similar time span. Volcanos also inject their particulate and gaseous emissions more or less directly into the stratosphere, where it lingers for months or years. Human emission, however, is largely limited to the troposphere (excepting high altitude commercial traffic and space launches, which are a huge culprit of some pollutants), and only a small fraction actually percolates up into the upper atmosphere.

However, blaming global warming on volcanic activity presumes that the explanation for global warming - that is atmospheric gasses and aerosols cause it - is correct. A NASA study concluded that the sun plays a far greater role in global climate than atmospheric composition changes resulting from volcanism, and if volcano's trump human emission, then logically human emission is not the cause or global warming.

Yes, over here the Met Office can't get the predictions right for my town - forever changing it with a day or 12hrs to go. However, your argument is bogus. Nobody can claim to understand what makes a quark tick, but we happily make calculations based on the known properties of protons and neutrons and atoms and the properties of many atoms through emergent statistical behaviour

You're comparing apples to oranges. If we have a single particle, we can precisely model most of its properties and behaviors. We can do the same for two, or four, or four hundred million, but everytime you incrase the number of particles, you increase the number of calculations and conditions and interactions. Now consider the atmosphere, with it's hundreds of billions of tons of gasses and particles. Now consider the hundreds of thousands of areas of temperature variance. Now add the varying velocities of gasses in any given area. Now take into consideration the multilayered behavior of our atmosphere. In order to predict the weather days in advance, the National Weather Service in the US has a network of hundreds of thousands of weather monitoring stations which take over twenty measurements of atmospheric condition, and a dozen satellites which generate data.

With modern mathematics, in order to predict the weather you have to know the precise state of the atmosphere at any given instant. Today, working with computer models and data in double digit precision, the rate of error increases exponentially so that by 7 days out the models are only 50% accurate.

Now, these models have been refined over decades of data collection. When the model fails to accurately predict the data, they're able to correct the model in a repetitive process of refinement. However, we are going into global warming for the first time in our technological and scientific m

What's worse: the brunt of the pollution stems from North American and European industrialization. I cannot image what would happen if India or China had a 2 or 3 car family (let alone, the emerging trend of one car as income increases).

Perhaps in western countries, we turn out some sort of less-visible and more harmful pollution, but there are perhaps only a few U.S. cities that come even close to the garbage we saw covering the entire eastern region of China. Judging from the responsibility they take with their industrial pollution there, I can only imagine that mass-owned vehicles over there would have little emissions control and make the problem even worse, if that's possible.

NASA-GISS Warming

Take a look here for a slightly longer perspective on climate change. I haven't read TFA, but I'm guessing human-controlled causes of global warming are likely to be dwarfed by long-run trends and fluctuations.

"[We, the Science Musuem of Minnesota,] are frustrated by a lack of consolidated resources and discussion about open-source, scientific visualization development tools"

• OpenDX - powerful data visualisation software
  • Open source but downloading requires you to register and to acknowledge their patents. This software became open-source in 1999
  • as first discussed here on Slashdot (why does Slashdot still use the same old Slashcode which even after 7 years of development still destroys the nesting of all its archived articles after 2 weeks???)
  
  
• Vis5d - has a unique interface for explicit 5d data visualisation
  • Open source but development has ceased.
  
  
• Webwinds - 3d data visualisation software
  • Open source, Java.
  
  
• LinkWinds - 3d data visualisation software
  • Open source but restricted download and development has ceased.
  
  
• OpenQVIS - 3d realtime volume visualisation on commodity desktop computers
  • Open source.

As far as NASA planetary datasets go, try the Planetary Data System

Some of the USGS topo datasets are available from the EROS Data Center. Some free datasets are available for download.

- what is Aerogel

- where is the foam used and why. Is evacuated perlite used in the annular space for the cryo tanks?

Basic ignorant questions, I'm just asking.

That is a really bad thing.

I've been interviewing for a position in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at JSC, where for months they have been ramping up to perform mission training for astronauts. The NBL is where the space station and shuttle mockups are submerged under 6.5 million gallons of water to mimick the effects of zero-gravity in EVA, shuttle & station articulating arm, and escape scenarios. While I was there today, one excercise was running, with two astronauts ("suits") in the water. At least one excercise will be running each day for the forseable future, and many days two.

Needless to say, NASA and all it's subcontractors have invested a lot of time and money with the expectation that shuttle flights will resume as planned. I really want this job, so I hope that there aren't any more program delays!

The theory about vulcanism leading to global warming as a cause of the "Great Dying," or as it is scientifically known, the Permian-Triassic extinction event, is not new. The researchers just found some more supporting evidence for this theory.

The Great Dying Permian-Triassic extinction event

Of course there isn't any money. How else is NASA going to develop the James Webb Telescope? The Hubble's expected to last until 2009 and there would only be a two year gap between its failure, de-orbiting or return to earth on a shuttle. I'm sure Astronomy Picture of the Day will do fine in those intervening years.

Of course there isn't any money. How else is NASA going to develop the James Webb Telescope? The Hubble's expected to last until 2009 and there would only be a two year gap between its failure, de-orbiting or return to earth on a shuttle. I'm sure Astronomy Picture of the Day will do fine in those intervening years.

Yes, a newer and better one is on the horizon. The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to launch in 2011.

The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to fly in 2011.

The problem arises from the fact that Hubble will die without servicing before then.

On Jan 14, 11:05UTC the landing time of Huygens:
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=-82 &vbody=1001&month=1&day=14&year=2005&hour=11&minut e=05&fovmul=1&rfov=30&bfov=90&porbs=1&showsc=1/

On Jan 14, 13:05UTC the expected life of Huygens:
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=-82 &vbody=1001&month=1&day=14&year=2005&hour=13&minut e=05&fovmul=1&rfov=30&bfov=90&porbs=1&showsc=1/

16 days later, 11:05UTC
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=-82 &vbody=1001&month=1&day=30&year=2005&hour=11&minut e=05&fovmul=1&rfov=30&bfov=90&porbs=1&showsc=1/

On Jan 14, 11:05UTC the landing time of Huygens:
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=-82 &vbody=1001&month=1&day=14&year=2005&hour=11&minut e=05&fovmul=1&rfov=30&bfov=90&porbs=1&showsc=1/

On Jan 14, 13:05UTC the expected life of Huygens:
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=-82 &vbody=1001&month=1&day=14&year=2005&hour=13&minut e=05&fovmul=1&rfov=30&bfov=90&porbs=1&showsc=1/

16 days later, 11:05UTC
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=-82 &vbody=1001&month=1&day=30&year=2005&hour=11&minut e=05&fovmul=1&rfov=30&bfov=90&porbs=1&showsc=1/

On Jan 14, 11:05UTC the landing time of Huygens:
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=-82 &vbody=1001&month=1&day=14&year=2005&hour=11&minut e=05&fovmul=1&rfov=30&bfov=90&porbs=1&showsc=1/

On Jan 14, 13:05UTC the expected life of Huygens:
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=-82 &vbody=1001&month=1&day=14&year=2005&hour=13&minut e=05&fovmul=1&rfov=30&bfov=90&porbs=1&showsc=1/

16 days later, 11:05UTC
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?tbody=-82 &vbody=1001&month=1&day=30&year=2005&hour=11&minut e=05&fovmul=1&rfov=30&bfov=90&porbs=1&showsc=1/

Scientists have also recovered much data from Huygens that had been thought lost due to a communications failure...

Scientists revealed that missing data could be recovered via a network of radio telescopes that listened for Huygens' signals as it plunged through Titan's atmosphere and settled on the surface on 14 January.

So far neither ESA nor NASA/JPL have anything to say about this, but I would assume this information came from the press conference that was scheduled for today.

I know the software folks here on /. always want to make excuses about 'its hard' and 'its to complicated', but, it's actually not hard, and not to complicated. complex systems are designed and built every day in the aerospace field, systems that many lives depend on.

Which is precisely why there has never been a software glitch in a plane system. You know, like the TCAS system which saw ghost planes and told pilots to avoid them (noted in IEEE Spectrum), or any of the cases cited here or here. Nope, aerospace engineers never screw up.

We do deploy equipment into life critical situations, so, for our work, 'shit happens' and 'i forgot' just dont exist in the vocabulary.

Funny you should mention life critical because one well known software glitch was the THERAC-25 which killed 6 people due to 2 software bugs.

We use checklists to ensure that all testing covers all forseeable abnormal conditions, up to and including partial failure of various hardware.

Which means your software barfs in unforeseeable situations and in cases of full hardware failure. Thus, your software is not fail-safe at all. Welcome to the real world - shit happens whether you like it or not. The unforeseeable will eventuate and no matter how much redundancy you have it is still possible for all the systems to fail at once. Denying that that possibility exists is unprofessional and dangerous.

The LASCO instument aboard SOHO saw a "halo event" but it looks a little off axis (to my untrained eye) so we may not get the full force of the CME.

I can't imagine how you'd pick up the faint signal (as Rude Turnip mentioned) - but you really don't have since NASA does what I think is an amazing job in providing all the data once it's processed. Just for one example, see: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/ I have many other examples on this little site: http://www.billdunford.com/dsd

This is 2005, and Slashdot. My only association was with the continent on Titan of the same name.

The NASA Report says that when Mercedes Benz first equipped their automobiles with Automatic Braking Systems (ABS) these vehicles had severe braking problems along a certain stretch of the German autobahn. The brakes were affected by a nearby radio transmitter when vehicles applied them on a curved section of the autobahn. A short-term solution used was to erect a metal mesh screen alongside the roadway to attenuate the Electromagnetic Interference and enable the brakes to function properly.

First off, these engines are only part of a two-stage process, making your whole point wrong. Using them for two stages gives a total burn time of 320 seconds, yielding an average acceleration to LEO of more on the order of 3g, which is quite reasonable.

Second, even on a single stage rocket, an average acceleration of 5g is almost acceptable; witness certain NASA studies (about halfway down the page) which concluded that 5g for two minutes is sustainable for most all humans.

Isn't this what TRDS already does?

We already have TDRS (tracking data relay system). It is a system that can acquire data from satellites in low-Earth orbit with near-global coverage. A set of specialized satellites in geosynchronous orbit are used to track, command, and acquire data.

11) Metal whiskers causing a short circuit.

It's reasonably likely that Metal Whiskers can caused this. Nasa also has more information about this pehnomenon. Both links I've provided have nice pics.

This would be my main question - what are they going to fuel these giant planes with in 20 years? Or 10 years? Or even 5 years? Already, fuel prices are causing airlines headaches, and most airlines are operating in the red as it is.

I suspect the future of flight might look more like this than this.

Next one is going up august 10 this year, actually. Not a lander though, this time it's a very capable orbiter with a) lots of new new and better instruments, and b) enormously increased bandwidth to send data back to Earth.

Actually, one of Mars Global Surveyor's solar panels actually moved past its designed stop point during the aerobraking phase of the mission. (MGS was initially in an elliptical orbit and would dip into Mars's upper atmosphere on close approaches to slow itself down to circularize the orbit.) The solution was to modify the aerobraking procedure to lower the pressure on the solar panel which did work by delayed the planned mission profile aby a year.

Details here.

To summarise, some bacteria survived inside an unmanned probe NASA sent to the moon, which was then retrieved by the Apollo over two years later. It should be noted that the bacteria remained dormant through this period.

Quotting from NASA:

"Initially thought to be rocks or ice blocks, they are more pebble-sized. The two rock-like objects just below the middle of the image are about 15 centimeters (about 6 inches) (left) and 4 centimeters (about 1.5 inches) (center) across respectively, at a distance of about 85 centimeters (about 33 inches) from Huygens. The surface is darker than originally expected, consisting of a mixture of water and hydrocarbon ice. There is also evidence of erosion at the base of these objects, indicating possible fluvial activity."

Is this an Earth in formation?!

You mean like the Mission to Planet Earth?

For what it's worth, the camera specs are posted on the official site... There are two 1-megapixel cameras (one wide-angle and one narrow-angle) weighing 125 pounds total. In addition to the brightness problems, annother likely issue is that this is 1997 technology (or more like 1994-1996 tech if you take into account design time).

For what it's worth, the camera specs are posted on the official site... There are two 1-megapixel cameras (one wide-angle and one narrow-angle) weighing 125 pounds total. In addition to the brightness problems, annother likely issue is that this is 1997 technology (or more like 1994-1996 tech if you take into account design time).

For what it's worth, the camera specs are posted on the official site... There are two 1-megapixel cameras (one wide-angle and one narrow-angle) weighing 125 pounds total. In addition to the brightness problems, annother likely issue is that this is 1997 technology (or more like 1994-1996 tech if you take into account design time).

This mission bears a striking resemblance to the unsuccessful 1998 Mars Polar Lander. The Scout program is designed to identify and choose the most promising mission ideas. I am assuming that it was coincidence that the winner was a mirror to NASA's very own MPL. I'd like to think there were no other ideas (Mars Glider, etc) that should have won but didn't because this mission resembled NASA's baby.

Any other snappy comebacks?

I'll take this one.

Wow, NASA sure can use more brilliant engineers like you! You clearly have better ideas than the thousands of engineers and scientists who have made a living figuring this kind of stuff out! Here's a link to the JPL career site!

it's a space station!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimed ia/pia06561.html

I'd love to see NASA spend some of its new $billions running a planetary probe on the Earth, exactly like those to our neighbors, including the launch of a probe from Mars, or at least the Moon. The project would target the Earth from the same point of (simulated) ignorance with which we target pioneering probes to other planets, using the same decisionmaking systems to pick the trajectories and sites for exploration.

We'd get a lot of interesting data about the Earth, a great product of our investments in space exploration. But we'd also get a way to interpret the results of those other missions, by comparing the "probe" picture of the Earth with our other pictures of the Earth, including firsthand experiences here at home. We'd get some insights into how the "outsider" biases of these probes differ from the "if I were there" experience we're all seeking, vicariously exploring these remote places through probes and networks. What would a hydrocarbons analysis tell us about Iraq, West Virginia, or Calcutta? Let's get some contextual reference. Such an investment could make our own experience at home into the key to reading all the explorations of the rest of our system.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimed ia/pia06561.html

That's no moon...

That's an interesting semantic distinction. If you'd read the JPL link I provided (and even the quote in my post) you'd find that Voyagers weren't "planned" to go to Uranus & Neptune, but WENT THERE ANYWAY.

Your point that I was responding to was that we didn't know for sure if Neptune is a gas giant because we had no missions to Neptune. My point was 1) we knew that anyway, based on earth-based observations, and 2) we did have a mission to Neptune. Are you now saying that we can't count science gathered at Neptune by Voyager because that wasn't the only place it was going? Makes no sense.

Both Voyagers were planned on being Jupiter/Saturn missions only because of the expense, and because we didn't know how long they'd last. They always had the possibility of going on to the other gas giants, and the missions were planned with that in mind. They were able to do so because of the success of the Jupiter & Saturn flybys.

Why bother Googling? You want to know about NASA missions, http://www.nasa.gov/ seems like a logical choice...

Wow, dude! You read books about space science when you were a kid! The other guy just does it for a living now he's a grown up.

Your original post talked about how scientists "always thought" pictures were pure PR and "prefer unpronounceable devices". I think pedroloco was well within his rights to call shenanigans on that, given his stated specialty. Your second post grudgingly acknowledges that not all scientists need to be forced to view pictures at gunpoint, but do so backhandedly by saying they "enjoy" them, implying they do so purely from an eyecandy perspective. You speak in the present tense about a situation that no longer applies. Yes, early probes had cameras forced on them for PR purposes, because space programs, even scientific ones, were cold war propaganda weapons. In more recent times, important probes like Ulysses are launched without cameras when there is no reason to take them, even when it would be travelling past photogenic locales like Jupiter.

Haven't done any missions to Neptune? I seem to remember being in the Air & Space Museum in August of 1989 when we received the first pictures from Voyager 2 at Neptune; they had a little printer there & were handing out copies. BTW, this was 3 years after V2 had passed by Uranus, yet anOTHER gas giant in the solar system.

Anyway, try looking at http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/science/planetary.html . You'll find something along the lines of "...the additional flybys of the two outermost giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, proved possible...."

As for Neptune being "...supposedly a Gas Giant...." we knew that *before* we got there. Apparently, we can do wonderful calculations of mass & size based on earth-based observations of planetary bodies & their effects on other solar system objects.

Oh, and according to http://www.astro.uio.no/ita/TNP/nineplanets/neptun e.html, 13 known moons. Probably a lot more....

To see the pictures go to:

1. The ESA.
2. NASA.

Check out this picture and caption. It has to be the best picture and caption from a space mission. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimed ia/pia05423.html

Venus rocks seem more flat. Hot, crumbling mold vs dust and round rocks